Realign
by shadowblade-tara
Summary: AU. She was responsible. She had killed her friends.


**Realign**

Rin shouldn't have been driving that night. She had only had her license for a few months, the road was winding with a precarious drop to one side, and there was just enough rain to reduce visibility to barely a few feet.

However, none of them were thinking about that. Kagome and Sango never took the keys from Rin, never told her it was too soon for her to be driving in these kinds of conditions. It wasn't like anyone was drunk, or high, or stoned, or anything else that teenagers could be while driving.

It was an accident in the truest sense of the term.

_**Decisions made from desperation**_

_**No way to go**_

_**Internal instincts craving isolation**_

_**For me to grow**_

Now Rin was standing in the same place it had happened, staring at the side of the road while a light rain drizzled over her. Her eyes were blank, unfocused, almost as if she was not truly there. It was kinda stupid to come out here now, three years later when all signs of the incident had been washed away.

It had been hell for the first few days after that. Agony had set in once the numbness had worn off. It had been her fault, after all. Everything that had happened had been her fault. If only she had been smart enough to give the keys to Kagome. It wasn't like she had been the only one with a license. Sango hadn't had hers on her that night, but that was only because she was on restriction. Sango and Kagome's mom had allowed her out only because Kagome and Rin would be driving.

Ironic, wasn't it, that Rin was the only one who survived?

_**My fears come alive**_

_**In this place where I once died**_

_**Demons dreaming**_

_**Knowing I . . . I just needed to realign**_

Now the incident played across her mind once again. The way the car drifted off the road a bit, how they hadn't seen the guardrail until it was too late. They had hit the guardrail, taking off the passenger front tire. That was Rin lost all control of the car. It had flipped, rolling three times before stopping top-down in the ditch half-filled with water.

Rin had been the only one with common sense to buckle in. The others had been thrown around – Sango had been found a few feet away from the car, Kagome had been half-in half-out of the passenger window. They were killed almost instantaneously. It was a blessing really. There was no way they could have survived. At least this way they felt no pain.

Rin had died when she heard the news. She had killed the only friends who meant the world to her.

_**Fell in a river of illusion**_

_**And apathy**_

_**Drowning in a self-induced confusion**_

_**I'd rather be**_

The next few months had been nothing but a haze of pain and guilt. She didn't even remember the funeral, much less anything that had happened before it. Her brother and legal guardian, Sesshoumaru, had been trying to bring her back from her depression. Nothing worked. For years, nothing worked.

She had lived with the guilt for far too long. She wasn't sure if she was capable of feeling anything other than guilt. She had killed her friends. She was the reason they were dead.

Now she was here, once again, but this time there were no tears. Slowly, as she stood there, life began to come back to her eyes.

_**My fears come alive**_

_**In this place where I once died**_

_**Demons dreaming**_

_**Knowing I . . . I just needed to realign**_

She was to blame, yes. She had been driving, and there was no other car involved. Rin supposed she should count herself lucky. Then there would be more blood on her soul.

But she couldn't go on living like that. The guilt would always be a part of her, a small wound that would never heal, but at the least she could cover it up. Three years had been enough to dull the pain, the keep her from completely losing it while she tried to make peace with her past. If she could stop the pain for now like this, she knew she could find a way to survive with it.

One day she would. Maybe one day she would learn to forgive herself, but for now that thought was so very far from her mind.

Rin was to leave the next day for college. She would never have to come back here if she didn't want to, but she would always carry Kagome and Sango with her in her memories. Rin sighed and gently ran her fingers across the wooden cross that marked the spot of the accident before turning her back on the corner. A small smile played across her lips as she whispered the words out to the dark dreary day.

"_**My fears come alive**_

_**In this place where I once died**_

_**Demons dreaming **_

_**Knowing I . . . I just needed to realign."**_

/---/

AN: Depressing songfic number 2! Based on a semi-real event that happened to me and my friends last Saturday. Yes, I did go off the road a bit and hit a guardrail. No, I didn't flip my truck. I just rode the guardrail all the way into a ditch. No casualties, aside from my truck. They don't think they can fix him. Poor Silver. (sniff)

Anime © Rumiko Takahashi

Song "Realign" © Godsmack


End file.
